


And Eve Said What About Breakfast at Tiffany's

by thursdayschild



Category: James Bond (Movies), Skyfall (2012) - Fandom
Genre: Bond and Q do not know how to relationship, Coffee Shops, Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-28
Updated: 2012-12-28
Packaged: 2017-11-22 18:23:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,016
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/612829
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thursdayschild/pseuds/thursdayschild
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Eve sends Bond and Q to have breakfast together and deal with "all that [sexual] tension driving everyone up the bloody walls." Needless to say, it could have gone better.</p>
            </blockquote>





	And Eve Said What About Breakfast at Tiffany's

**Author's Note:**

> I only saw the movie once and this is my first story about these guys so if it seems OOC that would be why.  
> I intended this to be based off of the Something Blue song "Breakfast at Tiffany's," but it kind of wandered off in its own direction. I kept the title anyway because titles are hard.

James Bond could look at home almost anywhere. He was just one of those people who oozed so much confidence that there was no way he could possibly have taken a wrong turn and ended up somewhere he hadn’t meant to. He could stride into exclusive gallery openings, high-end restaurants, and the bedrooms of the most powerful people in the world with the same ease and assurance that he entered the MI6 gym, his own flat, or M’s office. However, sitting in a small one-off café filled chiefly with liberal arts students, James Bond looked very out of place.

Despite his small smile and quiet nods, he had whole-heartedly not agreed with Eve that this was a good idea. However, not listening to Eve was about as good of an idea as not listening to M. Thus, here he sat, his suit sticking out like a sore thumb against the backdrop of twenty-somethings with dyed hair and more metal in their faces than he got in his whole body after being riddled with bullets. And, to top it all off, Q was late.

Bond sat with his hands clasped around a morning mug of black coffee, glaring at the chalkboard that enumerated the many kinds of mochas and related drinks that one could order. He glanced over every time the bell above the door rang, high and jiggling, and, at last, was rewarded with the sight of Q hurrying into the little coffee shop. He went up the counter, greeted the barista cheerfully, and handed over his Scrabble mug before turning and scanning the crowded room. He spotted Bond, smiled a slightly uncertain little smile, and came over to join him.

“Hello, 007. Sorry I’m late,” he said, still with that small, shy smile. “The North Korean government upgraded their servers last night.”

“Oh?” asked Bond, raising his eyebrows slightly.

Q shrugged.

“Nothing major, but they changed some passcodes so M just wanted me to make sure we could still get in.”

“And can we?”

“We can now,” he replied, his smile gaining a hit of self-satisfaction.

Bond nodded, vaguely noting that there was something profoundly wrong with the fact that he found this to be a perfectly reasonable exchange. It didn’t bother him that having the North Korean government hacked was all in a day’s work for him employer and maybe that was the more disturbing fact. However, his musings were cut short by the arrival of the barista, a typically pretty young woman with several thick streaks of turquoise running through her blonde hair.

“Got your coffee, love,” she said, handing Q his mug. “Anything else?”

“Could you get me one of those scones?”

“The apricot ones?” she asked.

Q nodded.

“No problem.”

“Thanks, Tiffany.”

The woman smiled at him and left.

“Tiffany?” repeated Bond, almost managing to keep the scathing note from his voice.

“I come in here a lot,” said Q, glancing down at his coffee. “They have a thing where it’s cheaper if you bring your own mug. It’s nice.”

“Is she nice?”

“Yeah. I mean—. She’s alright. I guess.” Q flushed as he stumbled over his words and took a large sip of too-hot coffee, which he nearly spit all over the table.

“You alright?” Bond asked mildly as Q spluttered and coughed.

“Fine,” he choked. “Sorry.”

Tiffany returned a moment later with a scone for Q and they exchanged smiles again, Q’s looking a little more strained this time.

“So,” he said after she’d gone.

Bond raised his eyebrows by means of a prompt.

“So Eve thought we should get breakfast and, um, talk.”

“Talk.”

“Do you even know how to use full sentences?” Q demanded.

“You’re the one who spends half his time listening in on my life. You tell me,” Bond replied with a slight smirk.

“Oh, this is just ridiculous,” muttered Q.

“Is it?”

“Well, what am I supposed to say? We can’t very well talk about work here and that’s about it.”

“About if for what?”

“Things that we have in common. Work. That’s what we’ve got to, well, work off of. We have literally nothing else in common.”

“To be fair, work is rather a large thing for you and me.”

“That’s like saying that drugs are a big thing for junkies.”

Bond smiled faintly. He studied Q for a moment before speaking.

“Eve thinks we should just shag and get on with it,” he said calmly.

This time, Q really did spit his coffee all over the table.

“What?” he spluttered. “She said—? _What?_ ”

Bond stared a Q for a moment, eyes a little wide and then offered him a handful of napkins from the dispenser on the table.

“I take it she did not have the same talk with you that she did with me.”

“Apparently not,” Q agreed, still quite flustered as he cleaned up the table and his cardigan.

“What _did_ she tell you, then?” Bond asked, frowning slightly.

“She just said I had to meet you here and that you had something to tell me. I take it that was it.” He paused and chewed his lip for a moment. “What did she tell you?”

“That talking would “improve your working relationship” – that is to say, yours and mine – and also do something for, in her own words, “all that tension driving everyone up the bloody walls” at HQ.”

“And?” Q prompted.

“And I asked her to clarify and she said that we should “just shag already” – again, her own words.”

“I see.”

Q was looking a little pale and took a shaky bite of scone.

“Going to make it?” asked Bond.

“Field work isn’t my thing,” Q muttered.

“Am I an assignment, then?”

“If Eve says so.” It hadn’t taken him long working at MI6 to learn that it was better to just do as Eve said. Most people learned that lesson fairly quickly. “And it is sort of my job to watch your back.”

“Just my back?” Bond asked, raising one eyebrow in a suggestive yet somehow suave manner.

“Did I mention that I _hate_ my job?” Q asked his coffee glumly.

“We can just go to work now. We don’t have to have this conversation just because Eve wants us to, you know.” Bond’s phone buzzed and he pulled it out and glanced at the text. “I take that back. We don’t have to do this because Eve _wants_ us to; we have to do it because M _says_ we do.”

“What?” Q squeaked in a tone that suggested he’d just been handed proof that his grandmother liked to watch hardcore S&M porn while she did her crocheting.

“M says, “Get it sorted with Q before you come in or I’ll lock you both in a holding cell until you can come to an agreement.” Followed up by a second text telling us to “take as long as we need.”” He smiled politely at Q the way a wolf might smile at a cornered rabbit. “Thoughts?”

“I think I need a new job.”

Bond gave Q a skeptical look.

“Fine. I love my job, but the people are crazy,” he said folding his arms like a sulky pre-teen.

“Q,” said Bond leaning forward across the table. “I might be a spy, but I’m also very good at being direct. Would that help?”

“When you’re direct, it usually involves a gun,” Q replied, shifting back slightly like he thought Bond might lung across the table at any moment and attack him.

“Look, I—,” Bond began, starting to get frustrated and ready to cut to the chase.

“Can I get you boys anything else?” asked Tiffany, popping up at Q’s shoulder.

Q looked up at her, eyes wide and silently begging to be taken out back and shot rather than have to face his present situation. Bond, however, simply gave her a smile and a death glare until she paled a little and backed away.

“As I was saying,” Bond continued, flicking his eyes back to Q and losing the death glare at once. “If it would help you if I were more direct I can—.”

Q, who had been looking increasingly like he might explode (assuming he didn’t blush himself to death first), suddenly burst into speech, words tumbling out of his mouth faster than code flowed from his fingers.

“Ever since we met you’ve been driving me crazy with your lady-killing, too-cool-for-everything, I-own-the-world attitude and your stupid suits and your stupid stunts and your stupid face and your stupid everything and you never listen to me, even when you know I’m right – _especially_ when you know I’m right – and I spend half my life these days worrying that you’re going to get yourself killed and the other half doing things for you because it’s my job, but you do always appreciate my tech more than the other agents, but then you take it and get it broken and get yourself broken and bring it back to me in pieces and I’m just about ready to kill you, but I can’t because I really, really like you. And I would also get fired.”

Q finally had to stop for breath, his eyes huge with terror at what had just come pouring out of his mouth. Bond could only stare at Q as he experienced the very rare (for him) feeling of being stunned into silence.

After a moment of listening to Q’s unsteady breathing, he asked, “Are you alright?”

Q nodded, then stopped and shook his head, then nodded again, looking increasingly confused with each movement.

“Hell, I don’t know,” he muttered at last, dropping his head into his hands

Bond smiled at him gently.

“Deep breaths,” he said.

Q lifted his head enough to nod, eyes fixed on his mug, refusing to look up at the man sitting across from him with that uncharacteristically soft expression on his face.

Bond reached across the small table and lifted Q’s chin with the tips of his fingers. Q slowly raised his eyes to Bond’s, his eyebrows still pulled in by fear and confusion. Bond privately decided that it was a cute look on his Quartermaster. Then he leaned across the table, gently guiding Q towards him, and kissed him softly on the lips.

“I’ll do my best not to get killed, alright?” he murmured when he’d pulled back a few inches.

“Alright,” Q replied, sounding a little too star-struck to really know what he was agreeing to.

Bond smiled at sat back in his chair.

“We should get to work,” he said after a moment of contemplating Q.

“Right.”

Bond got to his feet, dropped a few notes on the table and turned to go. Q hadn’t moved yet. Bond picked up the Scrabble mug, drained the last of the coffee from it, and offered a hand to Q. He took it a little uncertainly, but allowed Bond to help him up and then accepted his mug back.

“So now what?” Q asked as they walked towards the tube station he took to work on those days when he hadn’t ended up accidentally sleeping at MI6.

Bond shrugged.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Q pressed.

“I’ve never really done relationships.”

“Oh,” said Q, eyes dropping and shoulder slumping.

“But it looks like I don’t have much of a choice,” Bond went on.

“Because M says you have to?” Q asked glumly.

Bond stopped on the corner and looked at Q, waiting until he met his eyes to reply.

“Because I want to.”

Q smiled hesitantly, like a schoolboy starting to enjoy something he knew was against the rules. He held Bond’s gaze for a moment until the light changed and he started across the street.

“Does this mean you’re going to listen to me now, Bond?” he asked as they descended the stairs to the tube station.

Bond laughed a little.

“Maybe sometimes,” he conceded. “And call me James.”

Q paused a moment on the stairs, but his companion was still walking and he had to hurry after him so he didn’t lose James in the crowd.


End file.
